Innovate or ... Learn to Innovate!

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Introduction

When, back in 1985, Peter Drucker coined the phrase “Innovate or Die” in his book “Innovation and Entrepreneurship”, he most probably thought of companies being pushed into ceasing to exist in the market for the lack of adaptation to it.

Since then, many companies have been riding the wave of innovation with outstanding technical, commercial, positioning, and product ideas creating much disruption and impact at the societal level, on how people conduct and decide for their lives.

Since these models became so known to generations and generations of entrepreneurs, managers, clients or customers, common people - including highly skilled professionals and managers - started to develop a strange idea that innovation is something that should always be disruptive in a big way, that it should be easily identifiable or something that nobody ever seen or listened before.

This is why in the space of “innovate or die” and “our company needs to be seen as an innovator in its field”, managers at all levels can easily find themselves stuck with no idea which direction to take or what they need to do for them to be able “to innovate”. 

Why stuck? Usually, the C-level requires senior and middle managers to bring innovation without clarifying what they mean by it. Managers at lower management levels often take this request as unidirectional, as if innovation lies only on their shoulders. Therefore, it is not rare that managers feel pushed to innovate and end up feeling forced to do something unclear at the company and at a personal level.

And, not knowing where to start to allow for innovation, sends them into a space of disbelief about what they can really do, mistrust towards the entire “innovation call”, and discomfort or even fear about what will happen if they are seen not innovating, and anxiety for the uncertain future of the company.

Still, innovation can’t rise if management operates out of fear and sometimes with too much prudence in the face of the new or untested.

This is why, in today's article, it is worthwhile to demystify innovation and what it takes to be brought at an organizational level.

What is innovation in management?

When we are talking about innovation, we usually refer to something new. Often, people jump to assume that novelty means something unheard of or unseen before. Still, even in the 21st century, there are many companies out there operating according to old management principles, values, and ethics, or employing old technical and management systems. For them, innovation means to introduce things that have never been used within their context. For sure these companies will not be seen as market disruptors, however, within their context, the managers who will be able to champion such a project in-house and obtain the sponsorship of the highest decision-makers will be perceived and seen as innovators in their context.

One thing is clear: innovation is about creativity and how broad is its positive impact. The results of innovation can range from a fresh approach, an improvement, an advancement or a breakthrough, to modernisation, transformation, shift or significant progress, to even revolutionary changes at multiple levels.

In management, innovation can occur in all shapes and ways of manifesting, all of them contributing in their specific way to the company’s bottom line. Here there are areas where you can innovate as a manager.

• Leadership style: implementing new ways to inspire and guide your team.

• Decision-making processes: using data analytics or collaborative tools for better decisions.

• Communication: streamlining communication for effectiveness and adopting modern communication platforms and strategies.

• Workflow management: streamlining processes with automation or implementing new effective management methodologies.

• Talent management: innovating in recruitment, training, and employee engagement.

• Product development: encouraging cross-functional teams to foster creativity.

• Customer experience: utilizing technology to enhance customer interactions and satisfaction.

• Financial management: leveraging new financial technologies for better budgeting and forecasting.

• Sustainability practices: integrating eco-friendly practices into business operations.

• Cultural transformation: building a culture that embraces change and continuous improvement.

Ways of thinking that act as innovation deterrents

About a quarter of the senior managers I worked with in coaching entered their coaching program intending to bring innovation to their work. In coaching them, I learned several personal convictions that, if left unchecked, can act as deterrents to your intention to innovate and even to your performance. 

Here are 10 such convictions:

1. I have never been creative; therefore, creativity and innovation are not my things.
2. Innovation is the job of experts, and I am no expert.
3. I cannot be innovative, how can I convince others to be?
4. Everything is working fine, let’s not rock the boat unnecessarily.
5. We are against the clock; we do not have time for experiments.
6. We cannot be seen failing.
7. It’s too costly to innovate.
8. My team’s work is to execute.
9. This is the best way and we have always done it like this.
10. Why me!? Innovation is not my responsibility!

In organizations, innovation is no single man's (or women's) responsibility. It is a rather diffuse responsibility of all employees. Yours, as a manager, is to orchestrate at your level the dreams, visions, intentions, plans, actions and efforts towards something new which has a positive impact on the company’s bottom line or on society at large. 

Of course, this means different things at different organizational levels.

As the first-line manager...

innovation can mean as little as supporting the idea of your team members to develop and introduce local solutions such as automation for repeatable tasks.

You may have the temptation to think your people have tight deliveries and you cannot afford to miss deadlines, that you always have done it the old way, or even to cry “Why me?!” (as in why you should be responsible for it?) in disbelief that small improvements in your power to implement are worthy of being called innovations. Remaining in this line of thinking will create the opportunity for peer managers who are in favour of this idea, to see you resisting a normal pursuit for organisational improvement that, ultimately, will erode your credibility. 

When you are seen taking such an improvement initiative and spearheading and negotiating it with your manager or other peer managers for implementation, your proactive attitude will be highly appreciated, as well as your ability to acknowledge and praise openly the contribution of your team members in coming up with that idea and transforming it in practice. 

At the first-line management level, giving up the pretension you have to be THE INNOVATOR is key. This will shift your focus from having to show everyone how clever you are to understanding with your team HOW YOU ALL CAN WORK SMARTER, i.e. with more ease while employing fewer resources. Your responsibility remains to understand what can be improved and how, what would take to put it to work, and to present and persuade your manager or other higher authority stakeholders to let you make it happen.

Your innovation will touch several areas: your leadership style, your communication and/or workflows, product development or talent management, or even organisational culture. Do not forget that new ways of doing things create new habits, and, given time, new habits lead to a new culture - whether this means the atmosphere in your team, routines and practices in your department, or even happy customer stories about the results of your work or the product or service they received.

At the middle management level...

probably one of the most common innovation implementations at middle-management level is the break of in-house silos. This can mean anything from supporting other managers in creating more effective workflows using data produced by your department of function to championing or leading a cross-functional organizational transformation involving part or the entire company or technologies spanning various functions and requiring concurrent usage by multiple users across your organisation set-up.

However, innovating at the middle-management level means several things:

1. You allow innovation to happen in the team you manage and do not impede the process by being too controlling, by not acknowledging or by not giving credit;
2. You pay attention to what is missing for work to flow seamlessly and then plan to cover it. Are there patches of responsibility not covered well at the confines of your responsibility? Do you happen to entertain “nobody’s land” by holding back your decision or not wanting to be involved?
3. You support other peer managers’ initiatives for improvement and change.
4. You speak up to initiate improvement or transformation of workflows with peer managers and obtain the necessary support from higher-level authority figures such as your managers or an organizational sponsor.
5. You communicate continuously about the benefits of the mentioned improvement or transformation so that both layers - the strategic management (your upper managers) and the execution (your team members) - understand why this transformation is important for them, how their work gets better, how this implementation improves the company’s bottom line, and what additional benefits this transformation brings applicable to even larger circles such as customers or society at large.
6. You notice and communicate how such transformations create the need for alignment of performance metrics. What is measured gets done, they say. When new systems are implemented, they usually allow new things to be measured. You need to understand what is meaningful to be measured in the new paradigm, but also what are the potential traps of measurement – such as measuring irrelevant things, measuring too often or too rarely, or understanding how what you used to measure can be shifted into what is now available to be measured.

At this level, to play well your innovative role, your leadership style needs to shift. In this way, you will also innovate at a personal level. You will have to expose your ideas and have them presented and you will also encourage others to speak up and share their ideas. You will have to stay humble about what you do not know in your organisation (you are an expert about your function but will have limited knowledge about other functions), yet confident that you can ask the right questions and learn from the other managers. You will also need to be vocal about what you and your people need and obtain it from your manager. You will also need to develop a higher-level vision about the organisational constraints within which you operate and align your requests and expectations to these constraints.

At this level, innovation is all about how you make it happen under the sponsorship and often the coordination of a senior management figure, rather than coming up yourself with a brilliant business or organizational idea. While the latter is not excluded, as a middle manager you need to focus your innovative efforts on creating values through tiering down inner walls and building cross-organizational bridges.

At senior management level...

innovation means initiatives with a cross-organisational deployment meant to create significant benefits for organisational shareholders and stakeholders. These are usually deployments of new technologies or management methodologies, such as company-wide quality management systems or digital transformation.

As a senior manager at C-level, your role is to become the main sponsor of the company's transformation and the architect of its new organizational culture. You will work with various middle managers on the implementation of new workflows, routines, OKRs and KPIs and, besides defining tasks and their execution, you will coordinate your middle managers in the definition of new skills, behaviours and attitudes for the company employees and will support your managers in creating the right awareness about this change and enforcing the expected new response from the company employees. You will lead by example and will model virtuous behaviour in terms of using the new technology and the new workflows. You will make sure each middle manager under your supervision is aligned to support the deployment of the company-wide transformation and still be listened in terms of concerns or potential beneficial ideas and will model active listening, patience, giving effective feedback, creating awareness and cross-functional bridges for your reports or key people in this implementation.

Before closure

Learning to innovate is a management skill. Innovation is about transformation and creativity and is ultimately about problem-solving. People too often use fancy words to express simple things. One such fancy word is innovation. The simple fact that more than ever, companies nowadays are under huge pressure of change to stay relevant and profitable in the market, makes managers draw extreme conclusions about the type of innovation they need to create.

While many companies and smart entrepreneurs dream to create innovations allowing companies to access unprecedented levels of revenue, innovation is still innovation even if the company is not the market leader, but the results of its implementation created increased value not only for its shareholders but for all stakeholders involved.

Managers are those who need to connect the dots: taking previously unconnected or disconnected organizational and market data, interpreting it with fresh eyes, and transforming it into new meanings, visions, and objectives for markets, customers, products, and operations. This process also involves developing new management abilities and inner resources in every manager involved in these broad transformations, enabling innovation to happen freely and uninterrupted.

Think about how innovation is managed in your company, think about your recent experience with handling innovation as a manager, and reflect on the following questions:

• What do you think about yourself innovating?
• What do you believe about the innovative contribution you can bring in the world?
• Who are you when you need to bring an innovative idea?
• Who are you when you need to work your team to come you with an innovative idea?
• Are you aware of what blocks today your innovative power (if anything)?
• How often do you encourage and support your team's ideas for improvement and change?
• Are you creating an environment where your team feels safe to experiment and potentially fail?
• What habitual processes or systems do you cling to that may be outdated or inefficient?
• How open are you to learning from others within your organization, especially in areas outside your expertise?

If you also want to unlock innovation in your team and feel you would benefit from talking to someone outside your organization or environment, let me know. I am here to support you in approaching innovation with a growth mindset, encouraging you to see it as a skill that can be learned and mastered, rather than a daunting expectation on yourself or others.

Until next time, keep thriving!

Alina Florea

Your Management Performance Coach 

How can I support you?

By choosing an individual coaching program (1:1) you receive a highly customized approach, tailored precisely to your unique needs, challenges, and professional aspirations. It supports you to become the confident and performant manager you know you can be, faster and with less stress. In coaching, you will gain a thinking partner outside your organization, with whom you can explore ideas, test plans and ways of being, and learn to nurture healthier responses to life and professional triggers.

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Summary:

Managers, do you innovate? I bet you do but often you believe innovation is much more, and that is not to your advantage. 

Innovation turned recently to be such a fancy word. Given the times we are living in, companies need to be seen talking about it, commenting on it, and referring to it. 

Many companies are daily improving their operations, some are transforming the ways they work, while very few are trendsetters and impose into the market these new ways of working and living. 

This article demystifies innovation and presents it as an achievable goal rather than an intimidating mandate. It invites managers to approach innovation with a growth mindset, encouraging them to see it as a skill they can learn and master, rather than a daunting expectation.